Star Wars Lists

I’m planning on teaching a Star Wars-themed, RPG-driven creative writing course at least once (hopefully/possibly more) during the 2017-2018 academic year. To that end I’m trying to get caught up on the new Di$ney-dictated Star Wars canon and also keeping track of the many amazing resources pouring out of Fantasy Flight Games as part of their Star Wars line of role-playing games. I’ve been compiling Amazon Wish Lists as a way to track the items—and their significant expenses.

First up is a rough chronology of the new Star Wars canon with some substitutions for the films. Wookiepedia’s Timeline of Canon Media has been indispensable for putting together the list. The film order is obvious, the TV series less so but still pretty intuitive; the books get dicey when you start working in short stories, and the comic books are frankly a mess to keep straight and they’re the most expensive.

The real trouble I’m having is that a large portion of the new canon isn’t in print or film but rather two different television series. The Clone Wars takes place between Episodes II and III (or Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) and Star Wars Rebels is set before Episode IV (original Star Wars). The problem is time. There are 121 (!) episodes in The Clone Wars and it will take an estimated 54 hours to watch, not counting the 1 hr 38 min movie that kicks it off. Star Wars Rebels is a bit more sane clocking in at only 17.5 hours with season 3 having just started.

Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars role-playing game has three core rule books that work together: Age of Rebellion (for rebels and politicians), Edge of the Empire (for smugglers and scofflaws), and Force and Destiny (for jedis and force-users.) There’s a lot of overlap between them, but enough unique stuff to compel you to get each. Buying all three will set you back $132 and change.

The real expense is in the supplements, which really drill down into lots of great details so you can really customize your characters, whether she’s a soldier, diplomat, hired gun, or peacekeeper. The five books in the Age of Rebellion series will run you $123. The Edge of the Empire line has seven books and costs $174. The most recent line, Force and Destiny, only has three books (for now) and they’re $77 for the trio. And there are at least two must-buy books still on the way, one in Edge of the Empire for bounty hunters and another for Force and Destiny that deals with urban environments.

I used some professional funds to build my library and I’m two resource books short, with two more on the way. My hope is to have a complete library for students to check out based on the characters they make and thus save them the expense.